


they don't need to understand

by epistretes



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Sif, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Nothing explicit, Teen!Loki, Teen!Thor, a get your bitchass back in the kitchen moment, fade-to-black, kissing bare skin, mild references to norse mythology, mysogyny, sif beating the crap out of everyone, starts off as kid!fic, teen!sif, teen!w3, tyr is a dick, tyr is the weapons master
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistretes/pseuds/epistretes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki meets a girl and is humiliated by the weapons master. He tries to forge his own path, not realising that she is as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they don't need to understand

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you reading the Quintessence and Aquaphilia series, no I have not given up on them. Had kinda the month from hell and now I am actually on a much-needed holiday. However, my S.O. is fast asleep and I am bored in the hotel. Hence this. Hopefully I will have new chapters of those for you soon.

Loki knew that he needed to be stronger. His elder brother, Thor, was strong and everyone praised how he was growing in his strength and stature both. Loki, on the other hand was more like the runt of the litter. His talents grew, yes, but none save his mother seemed to appreciate them. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People mocked him - not to his face of course, he was still a Prince of the Realm - but he heard it when they thought he was not near. He always heard it.

Sometimes, he thought of breaking away and going to another realm to make his name and to be more than “Odin’s second son” or worse, “Thor’s brother”. He loved them both dearly but it cut deeper than they knew that they always outshone him. The were the light and he was the shadow. Only knowing that his mother would miss him made him forget the notion when it occurred to him.

He was sure the worst day of his life happened when he was marched to the training fields as they always did when he had not hidden quite well enough to practice his magic and read his books and he saw a gaggle of youths he was not familiar with. Amongst them was a young blonde girl, looking like she might break the nose of any who dared ask her why she was there.

He shuffled over to Thor, despite himself, standing just to the other side of the girl. He was intrigued by her, though he knew not why. Perhaps because she was the only other one there who the others clearly thought did not belong. They were outcasts, brethren - or so he hoped. He watched as the weapons master, Týr, came out and eyed up his class with approval… until he reached Loki and the girl, where he could not disguise (nor did he seem to want to) an up-curled lip full of distaste.

“I have not the time to teach girls, go to Gná and attend your needlepoint lessons,” he sneered to her and Loki thought privately that he might be included in that insult as well. It would not have been the first time that Týr had mocked him in the training field. The one place anyone felt that they could mock a son of Odin openly and not find the All-Father’s displeasure come upon them.

“I can fight,” she retorted. 

“You are a mere girl,” Týr replied, looking like he had stepped in to some of Hófvarpnir’s leavings.

“Let me prove it,” she demanded and Loki saw Týr’s eyebrow raise.

“Then defeat Prince Loki in hand-to-hand,” he told her and she instantly turned on Loki, who knew his face paled as he realised she was unlikely to be any kind of ally to him if she would obey the order so readily. She slid in to a good stance and Loki barely got his defences up in time before her small fist whipped out like a stone from a slingshot and fired at his nose. He realised too late that it was a feint and she whipped down and around so fast that before he even registered that she had done a sweep on his and taken out his legs, he was flat on his back with her dirty and scuffed boot to his neck. Týr laughed and Loki quailed.

“Beating _Prince_ Loki proves nothing, be gone to your needles where you belong,” somehow, the stress on his title as if he did not deserve such an honour stung even more than the rest of what he said. The boot came off of his neck suddenly and the girl launched herself at Thor. She did it so fast that his brother could not get his defences up and as Loki picked himself up unheeded from the floor, he saw Thor desperately trying to parry. He was strong but it was clear that the girl was fast and nimble. 

“I do not wish to hurt you if I strike you,” Thor told her but it was clear that he was rather enjoying her fire and spirit.

“Do not hold back because of my gender,” she both warned and allowed him free reign at the same time. It was not over quickly, Thor caught her with a few glancing blows but she rained down more damage than he did simply because he could not catch her. Eventually, though, Thor found the opening and caught her in the gut where she had left herself exposed and took her to the floor, winded.

“Nice showing, but you still-” Týr began but Thor cut him off.

“She will join us, Týr,” he said and the weapons master obeyed, though Loki knew Odin and Thor would both get an earful from the warrior later on about usurping his authority. Loki shot one last sad look at the girl who could have been his ally and he slunk away, wrapping himself in shadows.

“Loki, come and joi- … Loki?” Thor called out for him, but he kept his feet on his route with resolution and walked away. The library beckoned, he had more power to glean and if he could not wield it on the battlefield like the other kids, then he would win by trickery and deception. Dreams did not grow for one such as he on the training fields, some day he might figure it out but for him, a different path to tread.

______

One hundred and fifty years had passed since that day he had first seen the Lady Sif on the training fields and today he stood beside his mother as Thor, the Lady and their three best friends were proclaimed as victors in a test of skill. Warriors from all over the Nine Realms were (technically) invited, even though only four of them competed and yet this group had trounced them all. Odin made his proclamation and struck the base of Gungnir on the ground and Loki saw the crowds gathered erupt in to cheers for their victors. He clapped politely but as soon as he could, he slipped from a side door and returned to his little nook in the library.

When he heard footsteps a few hours later, he wondered who else might visit the library when there was a feast going on with delegations from Álfheimr, Vanaheimr and Niðavellir joining the Æsir in spirit and song. When he saw Sif’s silhouette, he briefly considered wrapping himself in shadow and hiding for while she had always been kind to him, he always saw in her his own failure.

“Loki? Are you there?” She called out softly and he stopped himself from hiding away to his own surprise. She turned and spied him sitting alone in the dark save for a little witchlight that he had conjured to read by. “I was wondering where you had got to, why are you not celebrating?”

“I was not in the mood required for feast and song,” he replied and tried to make himself sound mysterious, it usually worked in making warriors roll their eyes and leave him alone. They were a straightforward people and Loki Silvertongue was anything but. He was all twists and turns and they misliked him for it. 

“Rubbish,” she shot back at him and smiled, coming forward. He frowned a little at her, why was she not leaving him alone? “You just want to be all mysterious as usual.”

“I feel my time is better spent learning the auguries and wisdoms of Yggdrasil than downing mead and swapping inflated stories to cradle my own ego,” he replied as disdainfully as he could.

“You need not be a philosopher all the time,” she told him, taking his book gently and closing it. He was, if anything, more shocked by his allowing her to remove the book from his hands than anything else. Usually he would have given such a look as to terrify anyone who even dared think about touching a book he was reading. She placed it gently back on the shelf and offered him her hand.

“Just how much mead have you had to drink?” he accused of her.

“If you had been at the feast, I am sure you would have noticed that I actually had sweetwater instead,” she grinned at him.

“Why do I not believe you?” he asked and she pulled on his hand and lifted him from his chair.

“Here I thought the Silvertongue always knew when people were lying,” she teased and her hand continued to pull him. Before he quite realised what was happening, she had claimed his lips with her own. In his shock he froze for a half-beat of his heart but then he threw himself in to it. It was as if everything between them flashed before his eyes as their lips gently pressed against each other, as she opened herself up to him. She had always taken him by surprise and he had always sought her out when she and the Warriors Three came to visit. He guessed that somewhere, deep down, he had seen something in her immediately that had drawn her to him before Týr had cruelly pitted them against one another. He had never taken the path the others all followed - and neither had she.

As their kiss deepened and their hands began to wander, he realised that she was right; she did not taste of mead - she tasted like sweetwater.

______

When he woke with a start, memories of the pain Týr had poured on to him through the years haunting him more clearly in his dreams, he had to breathe and remember where he was. He turned and saw in the moonlight that Sif was breathing evenly in her sleep. The sheet tangled around her somehow managed to cover everything yet made her look like she was entirely exposed to him. He had never seen anything so alluring in his life and gently, so as not to wake her and spoil the way the moon and starlight glinted off of her pale back, he slipped from the bed and stood before his mirror. He gently touched the surface of it and sang in a whisper a spell to it that he stood back from at the last syllable and allowed it to take in the beautiful scene. 

She was captured in his mirror forever more, for when he needed her. Part of him still worried that when she awoke, she would dress, proclaim this a mistake or worse - a dare - and leave. He was not like the others, he was not like his beloved big brother and he had seen the adoring looks in her eyes to the big blond. Was he the poor substitute? If he was, he would still have this night, he would still have the memory of her. Nothing could take that away.

He slipped back in to the bed and could not help himself and he kissed her shoulder, kissed little open-mouthed soft kisses along her side until he reached the edge of the sheet that covered her modesty. He looked up and saw her dark eyes reflecting starlight back at him and while his heart skipped a beat in fear, she smiled at him. When she smiled, his heart beat again and he moved up her body to settle against her and indulge in a kiss.

“You know that no one will understand this,” he whispered to her.

“They don’t need to understand,” was her reply as she drew him in for another kiss.


End file.
